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I met a very nice lady from Russia after the Mariners game at a downtown sports bar. This is her website. She’s trying to encourage western tourism to her old hometown of Kislovodsk, an obscure resort city in the Caucases. If you’re not planning an overseas vacation this year, she’s also trying to sell hair-care products on the site.
Please do not laugh at her English language skills. That would be cruel to someone who’s trying to make it in an often cruel nation; who’s currently supporting herself via one of the cruelest jobs imaginable (telemarketing for Time-Life Books).
AMERICAN POLITICS EXPLAINED: Democrats want the world to be more like college. Republicans want the world to be more like high school. The latter wish is currently winning.
TODAY, I’M PLUGGING a book you can’t buy yet.
But I want you to remember it; it’s just that great.
The Golem’s Mighty Swing, by original Stranger art director James Sturm, is the first comic I know about (and one of the best narratives of any sort) about that relatively obscure but avidly-followed-by-some corner of sports history,
Jews in baseball.
It’s also an astounding feat of storytelling, finding the Universal in the Particular by creating specific characters and situations that show off these characters’ personalities.
And it’s an amazing piece of art.
Remember a while back when I raved about Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, that brilliantly written and drawn “educational comic” about the medium’s aesthetic principles? The Golem’s Mighty Swing could be a textbook case for many of these principles. Every frame is exquisitely composed. Every figure, every face, is a mini-masterpiece of action and characterization in deceptively simple ink lines. The baseball-playing scenes by themselves are frozen-action renderings that outpunch almost all superhero comics ever drawn.
The plot, you ask? The Stars of David are a barnstorming baseball team, traveling across 1920s middle America in a broken-down bus, playing local minor-league teams in exhibitions. They play up their ethnicity as an exotic selling point to the small-town audiences. But a fly-by-night promoter convinces them to take the act further, dressing their physically biggest player (who’s really black) as a golem, the man-made monster of Hebrew legend (and of a popular silent film of the era).
What neither the team nor the promoter realize, until it’s too late, is that the golem character’s visage on publicity posters helps inflame the anti-Semitic sentiments of the town where the team’s next game is scheduled, leading to vicious attacks and a dramatic climax you’ll never get in any yuppified baseball-as-Americana tale.
The book’ll be out in a couple of months from Drawn & Quarterly Publications. I’ll let you know when it appears. When it does, get it.
IN OTHER NEWS: Last week’s piece about the new book Fast Food Nation drew a quick email response from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous. He wrote that I shouldn’t have been so hard on the book’s author Eric Schlosser, who, despite the book’s rants about big restaurant chains and their corporate-agribusiness supply system, claims to still be a meat-and-dairy consumer and a loyal patron of his hometown indie pizza joint.
NEXT: The original Seattle Weekly crew was never as “alternative” as it apparently thinks it used to be.
ELSEWHERE:
YESTERDAY, we riffed on a vision of sexual liberation for a post-corporate era.
That, of course, presumes that such an era is imminent, or at least that one can imagine it to be imminent.
I know I’m far from the only observer who’d like the current socio-economic-political zeitgeist to change. And I can’t think of a better way to help it happen than by making positive affirmations that it already has.
In that spirit, let’s imagine the components of the ’90s nostalgia craze, sure to hit just as soon as the rest of the nation realizes how over the era is.
And as for that other form of techno-optimism, that John Perry Barlow-propagated idea that we should just let big businesses run everything (in the name of the Internet Revolution) took a rather substantial dip in credibility around late ’99 and early ’00.
Of course, my having listed these trends under the “nostalgia” rubric implies they’re not just going away, but will roar back with a vengeance. And with the ever-shortening revival cycles, you can expect them back sooner rather than later, ensconced with all layers of hip-ironic sensibility.
Consider yourself warned.
NEXT: The wrong way to turn an Internet startup into an established respectable firm.
JUST AS I START to get bored with my existing selection of cable channels, AT&T Digital Cable serves me up a fresh batch. In an effort to stave off the juggernaut of home-satellite-dish ownership, they’ve quickly gone and snagged up a bunch of the secondary and tertiary program services dish owners have long enjoyed.
Among them, in no particular order:
Still not on local cable screens but wanted, at least by me: The Food Network, ABC SoapNet, Boomerang (Cartoon Network’s oldies channel).
NEXT: If you’re really nice, I might share some pieces of my next book.
IN OTHER NEWS (Mike Barber in the P-I, on unseasonably-low levels in hydroelectric lakes): “A walk down through the terraced brown bluffs is a stroll through the history of modern beer. Colorful newer cans and bottles glimmer in the sun at the higher levels, giving way to more faded cans tossed overboard in the pre-Bud Lite era.”
THE YEAR’S BIGGEST local news story, the one with the most potential impact on our lives, didn’t have a single big event at its heart.
It’s the decline (and, in some cases, collapse) of dot-com stock speculation. It made its presence felt in small-scale ways (office closings; layoffs; fewer and sparser “networking” soirees; and a slight but accelerating slowdown in real-estate hyperinflation).
(Its related story, the possible Microsoft bust-up, had its spectacle elements take place in Washington, DC courtrooms.)
But several big here-and-now events did take place here which had an impact beyond their immediate sights-‘n’-sounds. Here are some of them.
1. The Kingdome Blows.
After Paul Schell cancelled the official, public New Year’s, Paul Allen staged a great pyrotechnic celebration during Spring Equinox week (the ol’ pagan New Year’s). It was also a half-minute rife with symbolism; deconstructing the onetime triumph of the pre-MS Seattle’s attempts to Go Major League (on a budget, and without needless ostentation).
2. The E.M.P.-ire Strikes Back.
Mr. Allen taketh away; Mr. Allen giveth. The Experience Music Project is almost all needless ostentation, a whole quarter-billion worth of it. It doesn’t really represent the spirit of Northwest pop music (its cocktail lounge doesn’t even have Rainier, let alone Schmidt!). It does represent the spirit of the new regional powers-that-be, who’ve got gazoods of dough and want to show it off as show-offy as can be.
The museum’s opening weekend was a big, mostly free, bash of all the top touring acts Allen could afford (and he could afford a lot of them), plus a nearly-complete local all-star lineup. (The biggest nonparticipants: Pearl Jam, who still have this beef with one of Allen’s former properties, Ticketmaster.)
3. End of Jem Studio Galleries.
Gentrification hit arts spaces hard; knocking out one of the city’s oldest and largest visual-arts workspaces (and First Thursday ground zero).
The Jem artists went out with essentially a four-month-long party of exhibitions, installations, performances, DJ events, live-music shows, etc., ending on the last night with a going-out bash that included a coed nude body-paint wrestling match.
4. Ralph Nader “Super Rally,” KeyArena.
The post-WTO Way-New Left had its biggest show of strength when about 10,000 paid real money to see the first real liberal Presidential candidate in 28 years and assorted celebrity guests.
5. Daily Papers Go Scab.
The JOA-married bombastic voices of the civic establishment, which had been proclaiming for so long about how things were just so great here and could only keep getting better, got a dose of reality. Just as the Times was running a huge feature series about the winners and losers in today’s concentration-O-wealth thang, the papers’ editorial and ad employees rejected a pitiful contract offer that wouldn’t help them keep up with housing costs.
The Times and P-I instantly turned into waify simulacra of themselves. Thin papers, bereft of their usual interminable “analysis” and huge feature series (and of their regular writers and photographers, and of the previous evening’s sports results, and of arts reviews). Papers that, had they been produced by competent people, would’ve been improvements on their prior bloated formats.
TOMORROW: A Dot-Com Christmas Carol.
REMEMBER: It’s time to compile the highly awaited MISCmedia In/Out List for 2001. Make your nominations to clark@speakeasy.org or on our handy MISCtalk discussion boards.
EXERCISE IS GOOD FOR YOU.
That’s the rather obvious main message of Colette Dowling’s book The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality.
A slightly expanded, and slightly more provocative, summary of Dowling’s thesis: Female humans aren’t weaklings; or at least they don’t have to be if they work at it. So get your daughters into sports and exercise now, and they could develop strength and agility comparable to males of the same size/weight class.
Women actually were weaklings once, but that was long ago, when they didn’t get enough iron in their diet and kept dying in childbirth. Modern medicine and cast-iron cookware started women on the road to greater heartiness; the turn-of-the-century “physical culture” movement continued this trend.
And now, Dowling asserts, we’re on the cusp of a great new era in which XXers can fully match XYers, even on the field of sport.
Already, besides the TV ratings and endorsement deals and magazine covers that’ve accrued to female tennis and golf players, there are attempts to bring women into the milieu of team sports. Besides the WNBA (which drove the more exciting ABL out of business), there’s a fledgling Women’s Professional Football League and a soon-to-launch Women’s United Soccer Association.
One of the e-mail lists I’m on had a posting last month about Heather Sue Mercer, who’d tried to become the place kicker on Duke University’s football team. When she was rejected, she filed a gender-discrimination suit against the college. After three years, she’s now finally won a $2 million judgement in the case–now that she’s graduated, in a career, and not planning to try out for team sports anytime soon.
The news prompted scholar Jim Beniger, who runs this particular e-mail list, to comment:
“What will become of commodified content derived from professional and collegiate team sports when women and men are finally fully integrated into them? One obvious possibility is that the audiences for various team sports will double–if not more than double. Another possibility is that there will be far less spitting, and far fewer athletes with police records for the assault and abuse of women. What do you all think? Can you think of even one undesired result? Will the Earth continue to turn on its axis?”
Speaking for myself, as one who’s mighty skeptical of the whole masculinity-as-root-of-all-evil ideology, I’m not so sure of these sky-high hopes.
Have corporate middle-managements become less asinine, college bureaucracies less treacherous, or city councils less corrupt, now that they’re at least more coed than they used to be?
As for the practicalities, I can imagine soccer (which emphasizes lower-body agility) and hockey (which emphasizes speed and finesse) as more easily gender-integratable. Coed basketball would need to deemphasize height and reach; coed baseball would need to deemphasize fastballs and homers; coed football would need to deemphasize brutal takedowns.
All of these changes, of course, might actually be intriguing to a certain brand of fan who prefers the thrill of strategy and team execution to the spectacle of raw power.
For a postscript, there was a small controversy earlier this year about boys joining a championship little league softball team. Seems that when females break into a previously all-male institution, it’s popularly intrepreted as an overdue challenge to outmoded tradition. When males break into a previously all-female institution, it’s popularly interpreted as a bullying intrusion into a safe little refuge for protection-needing little ladies.
Large parts of society, apparently, are not quite ready to accept the possibility or consequences of equality.
MONDAY: We set our fictional column characters loose for the first time.
I ALWAYS GO to the High Tech Career Expo, held every quarter in the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall.
Even though I don’t have three years’ experience in programming technologies that just came out last year (the chief requirement at most of the employers’ booths), I still go through the motions. I pass out resumes. I talk tech jargon with the recruiters (mostly made-up on my part, and for all I know also made-up on their part).
And I collect the free candy, toys, and literature from many of the booths.
Examples of hype-talk and tech-mumblespeak in the companies’ literature:
Examples of the toys:
Get in on the fun yourself. Get to the next High Tech Career Expo, Nov. 7-8 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue.
Who knows–if dot-com turmoil continues, there might not be as many of these, of this size, by this time next year.
TOMORROW: Memories of punk clubs past.
IN OTHER NEWS: The 2000 Mariners had their streaks and slumps but never gave up. In the end, they came up two Arthur Rhodes-pitched relief innings away from winning their first pennant and bringing joy to Yankee-haters everywhere.
This near-triumph could be intrepreted as a justification for the New Look Ms–a team built on coaching, strategy, and teamwork rather than a couple of superstars.
Or, it could be compared to the “new economy,” including a lot of Washington-based companies, initially riding high but eventually stumbling this year against the real-world domination of the Wall Streeters and their global conglomerates.
Or, it could just be another case of a “small market” team whupped by the big guys with the big regional-TV revenues.
In any event, it was a lot of fun. Let’s do it again soon.
LAST FRIDAY, I began a recollection of what Seattle was like in the fall of 1975, when I first came to the allegedly Big City after a childhood in much smaller burgs.
I’d already mentioned the only “alternative” paper at the time, The Seattle Sun; and its target audience niche, a Capitol Hill-centered clique of 25-to-35-ers who just wanted to settle down after doing whatever they’d done in The Sixties.
The mainstream media in town were also fairly tame at the time.
The Seattle Times, still an afternoon paper, was still as wide as the Wall Street Journal and as plain-looking as a cheap suburban tract house. It always ran a half-page photo on Page 3, which was almost always of a dog or Mount Rainier. Its features section, then called “View,” had many cute stories about somebody doing something important who was–gasp–a woman!
The P-I, meanwhile, was a feisty archrival to the Times in those pre-Joint-Operating-Agreement days (well, except for the editorials, which usually touted the same Chamber of Commerce party line). It still had some of that old Hearstian spunk in it; at least in the sports pages, which were then mostly about the Sonics, college sports, and out-of-town stuff. There were no Mariners or Seahawks yet; though the P-I’s lovable geezer Royal Brougham (who’d been at the paper since WWI) was already drumming up oldtime rah-rah support for our soon-to-be local heroes.
Local TV was a far different animal then than now. Newscasts were heavy on in-studio commentators and grainy 16mm film. Portable video cameras were just being introduced, and were largely used as gimmicks (as they mostly still are). That meant a lot of interviews, press conferences, and staged media events (held before 1 p.m. so the film could be edited by 5); interspersed with a few of the fires and police chases that now dominate local newscasts across the country.
And there was still a good deal of non-news local TV. J.P. Patches and Gertrude still ran a bizarre, funky kiddie show on KIRO, whose influence on the local theatrical and performance scenes lasted for decades. KING had morning and evening talk shows, providing endless interview slots to all the itinerant book-pluggers crisscrossing the nation. KOMO had a “religious program” called Strength for These Days, which ran at 5:45 a.m. weekdays and consisted entirely of the same film footage of ocean waves and windblown trees every day, accompanied by choir music.
Seattle radio was an even odder beast. For one thing, AM stations still dominated.
For the grownups, KVI’s dynamic eccentrics Bob Hardwick and Jack Morton engaged a spirited ratings battle against KOMO’s personable square Larry Nelson and KIRO’s fledgling news-talk format.
For the kids, KVI and KING-AM played an odd top-40 melange of anything that happened to be popular (Dolly Parton, Lynard Skynard, Helen Reddy, Barry White, Edgar Winter, Tony Orlando, Donny Osmond).
For the older kids, the FM band found KISW and KZOK blasting Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and their metal brethern out to Camaro-drivin’ teens from Spanaway to Stanwood.
The UW, meanwhile, had a little FM operation, KUOW, which played blocks of classical music (competing with the then-commercial KING-FM) and that newfangled network newscast with those really soft-talking announcers. (The U also ran a smaller operation, KCMU, as a laboratory for broadcast-communications students to play Grateful Dead songs and mumble their way through the weather report.)
And there was an honest-to-goodness radical community station, KRAB-FM. Its announcers often hemmed and hawed their way through a set list, but they played everything from Thai pop to big-band to political folk. It had talk blocks, too: Vietnamese children’s fables, classical lit, rambling speeches by already-aging hippie celebrities about why Those Kids Today had become too apathetic. KRAB stumbled through internal politics and mismanagement until 1984. Its frequency is now occupied by KNDD.)
TOMORROW: The Seattle arts scene at the time.
IN OTHER NEWS: Here’s a fun rumor for all you conspiracy theorists (which I’m not): Could OPEC countries be scheming to raise oil prices and engender U.S. voter restlessness against Gore/Lieberman? (found by Progressive Review)
NOW THAT EITHER a summer or winter Olympic Games occur every other year, the whole mega-ritual has become almost too familiar to seem really special; especially as packaged for American network TV.
The drill can be as painful as mile 24 of a marathon, and lasts much longer. Network officials invariably overpay for the rights to the games, then decide American viewers aren’t really interested in the sporting competitions.
So they end up televising only brief snippets of the various contests–just enough to set the stage for the supposed real audience grabbers, the slickly-edited personality profiles and human-interest vignettes.
During these segments, the athletes try their hardest to project enough personality to become instant celebrities (and, with luck, score big endorsement deals). But their constant training since learning to walk has turned most of them into no-fun workaholics, scarcely able to complete a coherent sentence.
And even when events are playing (taped hours before and edited in such a way as to destroy a game’s natural pacing), the announcers do everything possible to create a “feel-good” narrative storyline that’ll appeal to 18-35 female viewers who don’t normally watch sports.
That means U.S. competitors are often billed as the “stars,” whether in real contention or not.
It means events that are supposed to appeal to the target audience (gymnastics, swimming, women’s track and field) get priority time and attention, while others are left in obscurity.
It also means the technical, less-flashy elements of a sport are ignored whenever possible, in favor of highlight-reel spectacle moments.
Compare and contrast, meanwhile, to the CBC coverage, which has drawn cult followings in U.S. border towns such as Seattle and among big-dish satellite subscribers.
CBC does play a lot of attention to its country’s competitors; but since there are far fewer of them, it means the channel shows long stretches of field hockey, water polo, and many other NBC-unfavorite sports that happen to have a strong Canadian entrant.
CBC’s lower-budgeted coverage relies more heavily on the international-feed video, which emphasizes straightforward, no-nonsense coverage. To this footage, the Canadian network adds announcers who not only know the sports they’re covering, they assume their viewers care about the sports too.
And because it encourages its viewers to care about the games themselves, rather than just the instant celebrities, CBC isn’t afraid to show them live. This year, that means afternoon events in Sydney air in prime time in Toronto (late afternoon out here). Evening events in Sydney air late-night in Pacific Time, in the wee hours in the east.
NBC could’ve done this with its pair of subsidiary cable channels, but apparently couldn’t get over the “this is the way we’ve always done it” syndrome. The result: Anemic ratings and widespread disinterest; while the CBC broadcasters are becoming the games’ real heroes to those Americans capable of receiving them.
We’re probably seeing the end of the Olympic Games, as American television viewers have known them. The mass audience NBC wants can’t be corralled in by human-interest pap anymore because it doesn’t exist anymore. The next games could be covered on a broadcast channel with highlight shows (that don’t pretend to be more than highlight shows), on cable with live coverage of events with an adequate audience draw, and on the Net with unedited, multiple streaming-video feeds of everything. (Yes, even the Modern Pentathlon.)
In the post-mass-market age, nobody cares about media products packaged for people who don’t care. In sports coverage, you’ve gotta find, nurture, and build niche audiences among people who know and care about the particular sports being covered.
In the case of the Olympics, if you aggregate enough niche audiences for all the component sports, you could still have something.
TOMORROW: Web content as shareware.
YESTERDAY, we mentioned in passing the Seattle Mariners’ new “classic” baseball stadium.
The movie-theater biz is also trying to get neoclassical.
OK, they’re not going back to single-screen palaces of architectural wonder. (And they’re sure not going back to old-fashioned ticket or concession prices.)
But the big chains are trying to make moviegoing an entertaining experience again.
After decades of building big, bland, boxy multiplexes, they’re now putting up much fancier joints. The new multiplexes still have umpteen screens serviced by a central projection room; they still play the same dorky big-studio formula movies.
But they’ve got plushier seats, fancier carpets and lighting, and prettier lobbies and signage. They’ve got hi-tech projection and sound systems. They’ve got doublewall construction between auditoria, so you’re less likely to hear the movie next door.
Some of them even have curtains concealing the screen between shows (amazing what they’ll think up!).
But the new movie boxes are costly things to build and run, especially with the high rents in some of the “restored” big-city downtowns where many of the biggest and fanciest megaplexes are going up. And the chains aren’t closing their older multiboxes at the same rate they’re opening new ones. (For one thing, chains are building these partly to encroach on other chains’ established territories. For another, they’re often stuck in long-term leases, especially at malls.)
So even with movie attendance holding steady, and even with the high ticket prices and the high concession prices and the on-screen ads and the hawking of CDs and posters in the lobbies, the big cinemonster chains are in trouble. Three have already filed for bankruptcy protection; two others may do so this week. The biggest current circuit, Loews Cineplex (formed by the merger of several already-big chains), is being propped up by steadily cash infusions from Sony (which hasn’t been making big profits in its movie-production arm either). But even that isn’t keeping the chain afloat.
As one to always see an opportunity where others only see trouble (and vice versa), I can foresee many uses for the movie boxes that might become immediately abandoned if these bankruptcy moves go through. When Cineplex Odeon (now merged into Loews Cineplex) shut down its Newmark fiveplex, a local nonprofit theater briefly used one of its rooms before the whole space was redone for offices. We can do that again, all over North America.
Let’s turn some of these umpteenplexes into multidisciplinary fringe-arts centers. I can see it now:
Not only would such a scheme provide valuable, centrally-located space for these sometimes neglected resources in the heart of their respective cities and/or suburbs, they’d provide a modicum of historic preservation to these buildings.
This way, kids in the 2030s will be able to see the places in which films like Rambo III were meant to be seen. It may help them understand why such films got made.
MONDAY: Both major Presidential candidates (heart) censorship.
IN A LITTLE OVER THREE WEEKS, we’ll know if the ’00 Seattle Mariners will have turned out to be the Real Thing or just another of baseball’s classic El Foldo squads (like certain Red Sox, Cubs, and Angels squads over the years).
I don’t know which outcome to root for.
If the Ms win the AL West title (and if they do, it would be a more meaningful win than their ’95 win against a crash-and-burn Angels team), many observers here and elsewhere would interpret it as one more symbol of our formerly-fair city having finally Made It on the bigtime level. Perhaps annoying, but still a spot of pride of some sort for an ol’ Nor’wester such as myself.
If the Ms end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not even making the wild-card slot in the playoffs, well, it’s not like Seattle will go back to being the little log-cabin outpost some outsiders thought we were as recently as five years ago. But it might, just might, provide even a momentary dose of humility to some of the boosters and hustlers and self-proclaimed kings of the world we’ve got ’round here these days.
(Of course, a Microsoft antitrust loss would be much more effective in that regard, but that’s not even a possibility for a few months.)
Still, there’s a lot to admire about how the Ms got at least this far this year.
The Ms were born in 1977 of a lawsuit against the American League, brought after the Pilots left town after one season. For a decade and a half, they played the way many Americans thought of Seattle–as a quaint little outfit populated by lovable losers, not to be ever considered real champ-caliber players but to be admired as one would admire a cute child who tried really hard to do something grownup.
They played in a thrifty but inadequate “multipurpose room,” a la high-school plays performed in a “cafetorium.”
They relied not on “fundamental baseball” but on gimmicks to please supposedly ignorant crowds. Especially cheap home runs to a short right field.
Eventually, their farm system yielded a superstar who was great at just those kind of home runs–and was a spectacular acrobat at defense as well. This ace hitter, Ken Griffey Jr., was soon joined by an ace pitcher, Randy Johnson.
They made lots of spectacular plays and caught a lot of spectator attention, helping the team get enough support to finagle its way into a govt.-subsidized outdoor palace. But, as Griffey himself complained while he was asking to be traded last winter, one or two superstars can make some great SportsCenter highlight reels, but they don’t make a winning team.
So the Ms let Griffey go, after having already let Johnson go. But they didn’t trade or bid for replacement divas.
Instead, they kept most of their remaining better players, and carefully added good players to fill holes in the lineup.
The result: A new “classic” team for a new “classic” ballpark. A team that lives and dies on “fundamental baseball”–defensive plays, relief pitching, clutch base hitting–rather than on superstar pyrotechnics.
The ’70s-’80s Mariners were a clumsy but adorable small-market team.
The ’90s Mariners were a team that tried too hard to be “world class” without the resources to make it at that, in a town that was doing the same.
The ’00 Mariners are a real team. They win by playing together, and lose when they don’t. With the partial exceptions of Alex Rodriguez and Rickey Henderson, they’ve got athletes, not celebrities. They’re as close as you can get in bigtime sports to the indie-rock aesthetic.
A “Seattle Scene” team, if you will.
TOMORROW: Multiplex Bankruptcy–coming soon to a theater near you.
IT’S QUITE EASY to bash the Bumbershoot arts festival these days.
There’s the admission ($16 per person per day, if you don’t get advance tix, which are only available at Starbucks, that nonsupporter of alternative voices).
There’s all the corporate logos and sponsorships (radio stations “presenting” musical artists they’ll never play on the air in a million years; the auditoria labeled in all official and unofficial schedules with company names they never hold the other 51.5 weeks a year; and everywhere dot-coms, dot-coms, dot-coms).
There’s the big lines at the food booths where you get to pay $4-$7 for hastily mass-prepared fast food entrees.
There’s the annual whining by the promoters that even with all this revenue, the thing still barely breaks even, because of all the money they spend for big-name stars to attract mass audiences and all the logistics needed to handle these same mass audiences.
There’s those mass audiences themselves (who’s more troublesome: the fundamentalist Christians or the fundamentalist vegans?) and the complications they create (the lines, the difficulty in getting between venues on the Seattle Center grounds, the lines, the lack of seats or sitting room, the lines).
There’s the annoying rules (I missed all but the last 15 minutes of Big Star’s gig because I couldn’t bring my Razor scooter into KeyArena and had noplace to put it).
Then there’s the whole underlying implicit demand that You Better Start Having Fun NOW, Mister.
But there’s still a lot to like about the festival, Seattle’s annual big unofficial-end-of-summer party.
Principally: It’s a big Vegas-style lunch buffet of art. Those high admission prices give you all the culture you can eat. You can sample some “controversial” nude paintings, a slam poet or two, a couple of comedians, some of that electronic DJ music the kids are into these days, an ethnic folk ensemble or two, an hour of short art-films, and (particularly prevalent this year) late-’80s and early-’90s rock singers rechristened in “unplugged” form.
(Indeed, this year’s lineup included a whole lot of acts aimed squarely at aging college-radio listeners such as myself–the aforementioned Big Star, Tracy Chapman, Ani DiFranco, Modest Mouse, Sleater-Kinney, Ben Harper, Pete Krebs, the Posies, Quasi, Kristen Hirsch, etc. etc.
For its first two decades, Bumbershoot was programmed clearly for relics from the ’60s. Now, despite promoters’ claims to be after a youth market, it’s programmed clearly for relics from the ’80s and ’90s. Mind you, I’m not personally complaining about this at all. I like all these above-listed acts quite a bit.)
Some genres don’t work in the buffet-table concept. Classical music’s pretty much been written out of the festival in recent years; as have feature-length films, full-length plays, ballet, cabaret acts, and panel discussions. Performance art, modern dance, literary readings, and avant-improv music are still around, but in reduced quantities as organizers try to stuff as many crowd-pleasers onto the bill as they can afford.
Other genres have been shied away from, especially in the festival’s past, for skewing too young or too nonwhite. (I’m currently at home listening to the streaming webcast of DJ Donald Glaude mixing it up on the festival’s closing night; not many years ago, Bumbershoot would never have booked an African-American male whose act wasn’t aimed at making Big Chill Caucasians feel good about themselves.)
But all in all, the concept works. It’s a great big populist spectacle, a four-day long Ed Sullivan Show, a vaudeville spread out over 74 acres.
There are, of course, things I’d do with it. I’d try to figure a way to charge less money, even if that means booking fewer touring musical stars. I’d try to figure a re-entrance for classical, and bring back the “Wild Stage” program of the more offbeat performance stuff.
But, largely, Bumbershoot has turned 30 by actually gaining vitality, getting younger.
(Or maybe it’s really been 30 all along; changing fashions to keep up with its intended age like Betty and Veronica.)
(P.S.: The Bumbershoot organizers booked Never Mind Nirvana novelist Mark Lindquist at the same time and 500 feet away from the rock band whose singer’s real-life legal troubles are believed to have been roman a clef-ed for Lindquist’s story. But an attendee at the festival insisted to me that, despite what I’d written about the novel, Lindquist insisted he’d thought up his plot over a year before the real-life legal case, which occurred while he was trying to sell his manuscript to a publisher.)
TOMORROW: Riding the Mariners’ playoff roller coaster.
ONE OF THIS COLUMN’S TRADITIONS has been the almost-annual defense of Seafair. We’re resuming it this year, as a vehicle for asserting a few points I strongly believe.
1. Corny is just all right with me. And I don’t mean self-conscious, wink-wink-nudge-nudge parody corny either. That’s for people who can’t handle real corny.
2. Everything in Seattle doesn’t have to be World-Fucking-Class. We can have a big parade (albeit not as big or as respected as Portland’s) and a beauty pageant (ditto) and it’s still OK because it’s ours.
3. Working-class people, and their cultural expressions, are not necessarily fascist. Every year I get the same sneers from hipsters who either are unaware of the Seafair parade (you know, the folk who only read the New York fucking Times and only listen to NP fucking R), or consider the parade’s only worthy purpose to be as an excuse to scornfully chortle at square people. (This year, I had an invite to work on a float. The writer of the invite thought I’d be turned on by his description of the parade as “a trip into the heart of darkness of America.”)
To me, the parade’s an important legacy of an older Seattle in which such pretentious elitism was simply not done.
4. Hydroplanes are all-time cool. The roar of the thunderboats, the sunburnt noses on the Miller-drunk dads, the waterborne tailgate parties on the log boom, the pin traders, the way the boats have only two speeds (140 m.p.h. or dead in the water), the sympathies of the underfunded racing teams trying to cobble enough spare parts together to last the day.
The only problem with the race is the same problem it’s had for over a decade: Its monopolization most years by the Budweiser-sponsored Bernie Little crew. The Unlimited Racing Association is afraid to impose any parity rules (of budgets or equipment stock) that would seriously impair the Bud, and has been unable to attract, for more than a one- or two-season stint, other big-bucks sponsors willing to compete against the Bud squad at its budget level.
(Now, management of the whole sport’s been bought out by a partnership of Little and Formula One promoter Don Garbrecht. How, and whether, Little will deal with his own dominance, in order to restore competitiveness to the sport, remains to be seen.)
Ignorance of your culture is not considered cool. Seattle, and America, is a huge and diverse place, much more complicated and chaotic than any oversimplistic hip-vs.-square duality. You have as much to learn (if not more) from people of other cultures in your own town than from the N.Y./Calif. gatekeepers of your own particular subculture.
Go to the parade (and one or more of the auxiliary neighborhood parades) next year. Go to the hydros this year. Observe the families (screeching kids, bored teens, grumpy grownups), the ethnic dance troupes, the bands, the floats, the vendors. Don’t treat them like your inferiors, because they’re not.
Become part of the celebration.
Even come to enjoy it.
You’ll be a better person for it. Really.
TOMORROW: The He-Man Woman Lover’s Club.
A FEW DAYS AGO, I briefly mentioned a vision I’d had of what social changes might potentially arise from a tech-company stock crash, should such a rapid downfall occur the way certain anti-dot-com and anti-Microsoft cynics around these parts hope it does.
(If you haven’t read it yet, please go ahead and do so. I’ll still be here when you get back.)
One aspect of this vision was that a general public backlash against “virtual realities” (computer-generated and otherwise) could lead to a craze for any personal or cultural experience that could be proclaimed as “reality.”
Let’s imagine such a possible fad a little further today.
I’m imagining a movement that could expand upon already-existing trends–
It’s easy to see these individual trends coalescing into a macro-trend, coinciding with a quite-probable backlash against the digitally-intermediated culture of video games, porno websites, chat rooms, home offices, cubicle loneliness, et al.
As I wrote on Monday, live, in-person entertainment would, under this scenario, become the upscale class’s preference, instead of distanced, “intermediated” experiences. The self-styled “cultured” folks and intellectuals could come to disdain books, movies, radio, recorded music, and all other prepackaged arts even more than they currently disdain television.
(Not coincidentally, this disdain would emerge just after technology has allowed the masses to fully create and distribute their own books, movies, recorded music, etc.)
Society’s self-appointed tastemakers could come to insist on live theater instead of films, lecturers and storytellers instead of writers, participant sports (including “X-treme” sports) instead of spectator sports, and concerts (or playing one’s own instruments) instead of CDs.
The arts of rhetoric and public speaking could enjoy a revival on the campuses. The slam poetry and political speechifiying beloved by Those Kids of late just might expand into a full-blown revival of Chataqua-style oratory. On the conservative side of politics, Limbaugh wannabes might take their rhetorical acts away from radio and further into staged rallies and intimate breakfast-club meetings.
Jazz, the music that only truly exists when performed live, could also have another comeback.
Even “alternative” minded music types could get into this line of thinking; indeed, there are already burgeoning mini-fads in “house concerts” and neo-folk hootenaneys.
As packaged entertainment becomes more exclusively associated with nerds, squares, and people living outside major urban centers, it might come under new calls for regulation and even censorship; while live performance could become an anything-goes realm.
(If carried to its extreme, this could even lead to the recriminalization of print/video pornography, and/or the decriminalization of prostitution.)
The rich and/or the hip would demand real shopping in real stores (maybe even along the model of the traditional British shopkeepers, in which the wife rang up sales in the front room while the hubby made the merchandise in the back.)
Those without the dough might be expected (or even made) to use online instead of in-person shopping; much as certain banks “encourage” their less-affluent customers to use ATMs instead of live tellers.
In this scenario, what would become of writers–or, for that matter, cartoonists, filmmakers, record-store clerks, etc.?
(One group you won’t have to worry about: The entertainment conglomerates. They’ll simply put less capital into packaged-goods entertainment and more into theme parks (manmade but still “live” entertainment), Vegas-style revues, touring stage shows, music festivals, and the like.)
MONDAY: Another local landmark gets defaced a little more.
IN OTHER NEWS: There’s one fewer employer for washed-up baseball stars.
“DOT COMS MUST DIE!”
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that phrase, or phrases like it, over the past month or so.
It seems more and more Seattleites, in and out of the computer and Internet industries, have become ever-sicker of these companies–and not just of Microsoft either.
These various observers are offended, in differing amounts, by the real-estate hyperinflation, the SUVs, the traffic jams, the condos, the “market price” fancy-pants restaurants, the new chain stores full of useless luxury tchochkes, the cell phones a-bleating in theaters and parks, the rude and humorless public behavior, the slavedriving conditions and disposable-commodity treatment placed upon employees, the destruction of so many funky little places, and all the other civic ills that are popularly blamed, justly or unjustly, on the 300 or more “new economy” companies in King County.
Dot-coms might not be dying. But they’re not as robust as they were six months ago either.
And their decline and/or fall won’t be pretty. (Layoffs, closures, paranoid management behaviors, stock roller-coasters, cash-flow hiccups, pension-fund bankruptcies, avalanches of neo-modern furniture flodding Goodwill stores, you know the drill.)
But it could be entertaining to watch.
Besides, what else did you expect? Most new retail and other business ventures fail in their first five years–even when they’re backed by big stable corporations. Why did so many day traders and CNBC viewers mistakenly assume this law would be wiped away just by putting a “.” into a company’s name?
But they did. So did venture capital outfits, ploughing billions into business plans that would look dubious to any sane observer.
The result: A national economy, particularly the urban economies of a dozen specific metro areas including ours, increasingly organized around a “new prosperity” where many of the most acclaimed corporate “success stories” have lost millions and expect to lose millions more for the indefinite future–if they have one.
MONDAY: Imagining a post-Net-stock-crash world.
IN OTHER NEWS: The guy who’s spent the past half-decade or more defining himself as the anti-BS, anti-hype crusader joins Monday Night Football. Huh?
